How Many Words Do You Need to Know for the TOEFL

This seems like a very simple question, but in fact it’s incredibly hard to answer. We don’t need to analyze the question too much to see the problem. Let’s just look at a small example to show why counting words isn’t very practical.

Counting Words Is Extremely Hard

Take the word “place, ” for example. Maybe you already see a problem: there are two different words I might be talking about, one a noun and one a verb. We have two separate meanings in these two sentences:

Noun: Where’s the nearest place I can buy a coffee? (Meaning “location”)

But that separation is clear enough. There are two different parts of speech and two different meanings. So we can just say they are different words, right? The problem is that there are still other uses of “place”:

Noun: Do you want to have dinner at my place this weekend? (Meaning “home,” informal)

Noun: My car was hit in three places during the accident. (Meaning “points on the car,” not three different roads or towns)

Noun: I didn’t win the competition, but I came in second place. (Meaning “ranking”)

Verb: Although small, the new company is well placed to make major changes in the market. (Meaning “prepared,” in a way—with the right resources and abilities)

And there are even more. We can conjugate the verb, too, into “placing” or “placed.” Or we could consider the words that come out of “place,” such as “placement” or “placeless.” Or we could look at idioms such as “out of place” or “take place.” When does it stop being the same word? How many words are we really talking about here?

Many, many words in English, as in all languages, have multiple uses. Sometimes they have completely different meanings as different parts of speech, such as the adjective “exact” and the verb “exact” (meaning “demand and take”), but sometimes the different parts of speech are closely related, as is true of the verb “export” and the noun “export.” Meanwhile, sometimes the almost-separate words are the same part of speech, and the meanings are so similar, we might consider them just one meaning of one word (e.g. “place” to mean “home” or “location” above). It’s complicated!

That said, there are ways that linguists use to count numbers of words, so you can find articles about “how many words are in English,” etc. But none of those ways to count words are perfect, because language isn’t so simple. But none of that matters for the TOEFL. Here’s the important lesson for now:

Counting vocabulary words for the TOEFL is at best difficult, at worst harmful.

Learning Words in Lists Is Not Really Learning English

Above, I say “harmful” because counting words creates a way of thinking that doesn’t match how the test works.

Imagine, for example, I start working with an alien from another planet as a student. This alien knows zero English words, but he has a Babel Fish (a fictional fish that lives in your ear and translates any alien language, from the book The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy). Now, I go through a TOEFL test from the official guide, and I make a list of every single word in test. I then give the alien the list, and he memorizes all the words and their translations. Then, I give him that TOEFL. How many questions will he get right in the reading and listening sections? Some, probably, but definitely not all, and not enough for university admissions. Understand a sentence is more than just memorizing definitions of words. It is knowing meanings of phrases, idioms, grammatical structures, and more.

That’s part of why translation programs are so bad at translating Chinese to English. They know the definitions of words, but they don’t always know which definitions are best in context, nor what the larger phrases mean. Language in dictionary definitions is very different from language in use.

And if you start thinking about the number of words you should learn for the TOEFL, you are preparing to be that alien, taking a test with incomplete English experience. Yes, flashcards help. But don’t think about “how many.” Think about how well you truly understand each word. If you want to improve that understanding, read, read, read. Never stop reading. And use the flashcards to start your knowledge of a word, not to complete it. Once you know the basic meaning from a flashcard, you can really learn the meaning through usage. The more you read and listen to challenging English, the better prepared you will be on the TOEFL.

What to Do Instead

Maybe now you’re thinking about a different question: how hard is the TOEFL? And while that’s not an easy question to answer either, it’s a bit more helpful than thinking about the number of words. Since the TOEFL is about English in use, we can compare its difficulty to other English in use.

And finally, if you still want to know how much you should focus on learning TOEFL vocabulary, then the best place to start is with some official TOEFL practice material. After doing some reading and listening, if you find that the vocabulary is causing trouble for you, then start studying the academic word list (and reading more, of course!). Use your experience with TOEFL material to know how much vocabulary you should study. Don’t trust a number—nobody can tell you “how many words” confidently and correctly.

More from Magoosh

About Lucas Fink

Lucas is the teacher behind Magoosh TOEFL. He’s been teaching TOEFL preparation and more general English since 2009, and the SAT since 2008. Between his time at Bard College and teaching abroad, he has studied Japanese, Czech, and Korean. None of them come in handy, nowadays.

5 Responses to How Many Words Do You Need to Know for the TOEFL

I took the test on lextutor.ca and got result that my vocab size is 8000 words. However, I still want to increase my vocab strength, especially for TOEFL as of Now. I have completed the list of words given at the back of Words Power Made Easy by Norman Lewis. Can you suggest any other resource please?

If you’re looking to improve your vocabulary, the best way to do so is by reading a lot. Word lists are okay if they are used well—making flashcards, finding example sentences, practicing using the words yourself—but alone with definitions, they don’t help much. Reading is a better way to increase your understanding of words in context and to learn how to use the words. If your vocabulary is already strong, then start reading more difficult English tests. Try these sources for a challenge:

The New York Times
The Economist
The Atlantic
The New Yorker
aldaily.com

I also recommend our flashcards. If you find that you already know most of our TOEFL words, including the advanced deck, try our GRE flashcards. The more advanced GRE words are not helpful for the TOEFL, but some of the easier decks have more useful words. 🙂

I think counting vocabulary words for any exam is very useful. You should have a list of the words that are likely to appear in the exam tests and not only learn their meanings, but practise them as well. Maybe counting words Is hard, but where there is a will, there is a way). You can count the word PLACE as one word, but students must know some typical models of word formation.

Thanks for input, Irina! I agree that learning the most common words is very important—that’s why I do recommend using flashcards! But it’s dangerous to simply say “I need to learn 1000 words” without considering how the words are used. That’s the focus of this post. It’s more important to improve communication, not increase numbers. Students who say “I learned 1000 words” often haven’t really learned them in ways that improve scores, which is why I recommend focusing on new vocabulary and using it, without counting. I think we agree that the practice is key! And I agree that learning different word forms is very helpful. 🙂

Magoosh blog comment policy: To create the best experience for our readers, we will only approve comments that are relevant to the article, general enough to be helpful to other students, concise, and well-written! 😄 Due to the high volume of comments across all of our blogs, we cannot promise that all comments will receive responses from our instructors.

We highly encourage students to help each other out and respond to other students' comments if you can!

If you are a Premium Magoosh student and would like more personalized service from our instructors, you can use the Help tab on the Magoosh dashboard. Thanks!